my plan

 

You do not know me, but for those who know me best, including me, myself, and I, the matter of my sanity is little argued and much agreed: it's an issue to be dealt with. For one, why did Linda marry a man who is but eleven months short of nonogenarianism? 

I never "asked" Linda to marry me. We got started seventy-two years ago this fall, she a junior, I a senior at Bay High. By the Time it was clear to both of us, the summer before my senior, her junior, year of college, she transferred from her college in Virginia to Florida to be with me, there was no need for "asking." In December I asked her father if we could be engaged, and she put on the engagement ring. 

Then when I graduated UnivFlorida and was about to fly off to US Navy Officer Candidate School and three year Navy commitment, the only personal matter was to get a calendar and set a June wedding date, before I left in July. 

Linda's father gets all the credit: when he saw Linda and her mother looking at the June calendar, he said, startled, "Marriage? Nobody said anything about marriage, all I agreed to was engagement." By then he was history in the process, a surprised man.

What's the sanity issue then? 

It's that by that Time, I had years ago decided against theological seminary and ordination that I'd first settled on at age ten, now a college graduate leaving my "career" a question with no answer. As luck had it, my first Navy sea duty was so much fun, and I was so solidly affirmed by my peers and superiors, that I signed up to stay, converted from Naval Reserve to Regular Navy. A facet of insanity is that I made that decision alone. Linda may have been surprised, we never discussed it.

A decade and more later, as the ship of my second sea duty headed across the Pacific for our nine month WestPac cruise, I thought of my little family at home in Chula Vista, San Diego, and decided, "I've had all I can stand of this (obscenity), where other people make life decisions for me, I'm getting out of this C.S. outfit at twenty years." You will pardon the inferred language. I stuck with it, became Commander, USN (Retired). 

At that point my mother said, "We always thought that when you retired you'd go to seminary and ordination." I said, "No, Mama, I'm not doing that," and went into business for myself, but there was the seed, replanted after all these years. 

It worked for a while. I was away from home some eighty percent of the next few years. Three years after Navy retirement, in business full Time, and working as part Time adjunct professor of political science at a Florida university, I was admitted to theological seminary and started full Time. It was insane.

Another insanity factor: I made the new redecision, even to my own surprise, in the flash of an instant, telling my rector who was asking me, "How much longer are you going to deny the Lord's call on your life?" and I said, "Oh, what the hell. I give up." Basically he turned, picked up the phone, dialed the bishop, and said, "I got him."

I'd not breathed to Linda one word of what was unfolding. That day, she showed up a few minutes later for her regular work of volunteering to help the parish secretary in the office, and the rector told her. 

Starting theological seminary on my forty-fifth birthday, completing my curriculum, I was ordained, and we arrived in Apalachicola the summer I was forty-eight. Little and none of this involved future-planning. It just happened as life went along. I'm not an orderly person. There's an element of insanity. 

Breakfast this morning, with hot & black, two saltine crackers with PBJ. For noon dinner, glass of icy cold chardonnay and half a dozen sushi pieces: I like the raw salmon and raw tuna over rice cakes, smeared with the hot green stuff and dipped in soy sauce. For supper, two red snapper filets are on the stovetop, prepped and ready to zip into the oven. 

When? IDK, maybe four o'clock? 

Where's the insanity? It's weaved throughout the fabric of my life's tapestry. No planning, I just ended up here by the grace of God.

What would I change? Nothing. Not a thing. Not one damn thing lest it all collapse and turn out to have been a dream.

RSF&PTL

T89&C